Firm Seeks to Drop Out of Napalm Disposal Operation

Two days after a train carrying Vietnam War-era napalm left this northern San Diego County town for Indiana, the president of the disposal company that had agreed to receive it said Monday that he wants to back out.

“Though we still feel it’s the right environmental thing to do and that we’re the right company to do it, we’re just not big enough to withstand this political pressure,” Robert Campbell, president of Pollution Control Industries in East Chicago, Ind., told the Post-Tribune in Gary, Ind.

In a letter Monday to the Navy and Battelle Memorial Institute, the primary contractor, an attorney for Pollution Control Industries said the company “hereby advises Battelle to cease making any further shipments and to recall all shipments already made.”

In another letter--dated Friday, the day before the train carrying the napalm departed--the attorney, Steven Jay Katz, wrote that because the parties had not reached agreement on all matters, “you are instructed not to ship until such time as all matters are resolved.”

Messages left at the company’s offices in East Chicago and with two spokesmen in Chicago were not returned late Monday. Several calls made to a Navy environmental public affairs officer in San Diego also were not returned.

Lt. Cmdr. Jon Smith of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command in Alexandria, Va., said he could confirm only that Pollution Control Industries sent a letter to Battelle.

The nation’s supply of Vietnam War-era napalm was stored in Fallbrook for decades.